


there is thunder in our hearts

by beardsley



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're in a youth hostel in Kiev chasing ghosts, and maybe it's the proximity that does it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is thunder in our hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [心中如有惊雷](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1602419) by [lexdivina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexdivina/pseuds/lexdivina)



> Takes place a few months after the end of CA:TWS, and won't make any sense without it. Thanks to Lanyon for giving it the go-ahead. Title from Kate Bush/Placebo, because I have zero shame or dignity.

They're in a youth hostel in Kiev chasing ghosts, and maybe it's the proximity that does it.

Bucky has been on edge ever since they got on the train from Paris to Krakow, staring moodily out the window as the early spring horizon passed them by. He sat with one knee pulled up to his chest, tapping out a jerky uneven rhythm against his thigh with the fingers of his left hand. Everything in Steve, everything, wanted to reach out; one look in Sam's direction told him that would be a bad idea, though.

'Baby steps,' Sam said. 'Don't push it, man.'

So Steve just buried himself in the dog-eared copy of _Slaughterhouse-Five_ he bought in Dublin between connecting flights (he and Sam wondered, once they finally found Bucky holed up in the middle of nowhere in Indiana, how they would get out of the country with a guy whose arsenal included a fuck-off metal arm and at least three knives at any given time; turned out, HYDRA equipped Bucky with more than one trick to keep his own tricks safe from airport security).

Sam was right, of course. Between the two of them, Steve runs on adrenaline and dogged stubbornness and faith, on emotion and sheer willpower to make Bucky better; Sam, though, has real experience. He knows what to do, and how to talk to someone who doesn't feel like talking most of the time. He focusses on Bucky the same way he focussed on Steve when they first met and Steve was barely hanging on; he knows exactly what to say to push Bucky closer to reclaiming the humanity that was ripped from him, one step at a time.

'He's a wreck,' he told Steve back in the States. 'Don't think he's ever gonna be the guy you remember. Worst PTSD case I've seen in — jesus, ever.'

But he didn't say _no_. He didn't say no to coaxing Bucky into coming with them. He didn't say no when Steve decided to drop everything and go on some ill-advised road trip.

He didn't say no, and now they're in Kiev.

Sam leaves to get supplies, catch up on some of the news they've missed in the nearest Internet cafe. They take turns doing it, even though Steve can't help the overwhelming — pathetic, really — anxiety each time it's Bucky who leaves. Each time, he comes back. Each time, Steve fights the sinking feeling that it's gonna be the last; that his final memory of Bucky will be the sight of his back and hunched shoulders as he walks away.

It isn't. Each and every time, Bucky proves him wrong.

He paces, now, tense and jumpy. If this was not now, if they weren't where they are, Steve would think of his mood as trigger-happy, but there is nothing happy behind the pull of the Winter Soldier's trigger — there is nothing full stop, no emotion, and even as he claws his way back to a semblance of humanity Bucky's eyes go completely blank as soon as he gets his hands on a weapon, if only for reassurance — and the joke feels completely flat and wrong.

Steve turns up the volume on the ancient, rackety television set and leans back on the bed. There is only one. They can't afford a bigger room, so Sam and Steve share the bed while Bucky takes the cot the hostel staff gave them. Steve watches Bucky prowl around the space of the room like a caged tiger, cataloguing the way he moves. It's different, god, of course it's different. Once upon a time Bucky could walk into any place and own it. He had enough charm and force of personality to draw anyone's eye.

Now, he moves with a calculated but effortless sparsity of gesture. He moves like Steve imagines wolves might move, comfortable and steady in his skin and radiating the threat of violence with every breath he takes. He moves like a predator.

Ages ago Steve would know precisely what was going on in Bucky's head. Now, he can't read him any more than he can read Cyrillic script. Bucky puts up walls upon walls of twisted barbed wire around himself. He does it automatically, without thinking. Steve wonders if that is just another thing that was carefully manufactured (and he doesn't, in the end, have to wonder; he knows it's the truth).

The air in the room feels stale and the television is blaring a Russian hockey game and Bucky stops with his back to Steve, looking out through the window. His shoulders twitch like he's trying to shake away some unseen tension, and he cocks his head to one side, then the other. Steve can hear the soft creak in his neck, and his fingers itch. He fists his hands in the sheets and forces himself to look at the television screen.

Bucky asks, 'How d'you know when you want something?'

He's a little hoarse. He doesn't talk much these days. When he does, it feels like a victory.

Steve swallows. 'It's — I don't know. You just kinda feel it, I guess. Like a pull.'

'Gravity,' says Bucky, barely audible. He bows his head, bows his shoulders. Steve would give anything to see his expression, even though he probably couldn't read it if he tried.

'Yeah, something like that.'

He steadfastly refuses to think about Bucky's first question. He refuses to think about the fact that Bucky doesn't know how to tell what or if he's feeling, or about the sheer degree to which he's been taken apart. Everything that made him who he is, everything that made him human; he was stripped bare of it all. The pieces are all that's left and it's something, it's always something, but god, Steve is terrified sometimes that it's never gonna be enough.

Bucky turns away from the window, and he looks — angry, almost. Not at Steve. Never at Steve, even when he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night and goes for Steve's throat when Steve tries to calm him down. Even then the violence is neutral, the anger aimed inwards.

'I want —' he starts, then stops. He drops his eyes to the television, to Steve, and without any warning pulls his shirt over his head. It falls to the floor, immediately forgotten. Bucky lifts his chin and watches Steve like a hawk, watches his reaction, and Steve's reaction —

This is the first time he's seen Bucky like this since, jesus, since 1944. He's never seen the scars on his left side, the ragged tissue around the border between the human and the mechanical, Bucky's flesh and blood shoulder giving way to cold ungiving metal. He's never seen Bucky without a shirt on _after_ , after everything. Bucky kept covering both his arms even when they took a brief detour to Macedonia, and he's taken to wearing shirts with slightly too-long sleeves and curling his fingers in them, obscuring his hands completely, and now it must mean something and — Steve's babbling inside his own head.

His breathing picks up when Bucky starts making his way towards him, and Steve knows it's obvious. He's on the verge of fight or flight, because no matter how much he trusts Bucky and no matter how much he wants to believe, Bucky isn't just _Bucky_ now. He can be cold and he can be mechanical and he can be brutally efficient when presented with a challenge, and it would take someone much more fucking naive than Steve to not be terrified of the Winter Soldier.

He swallows. 'What are you doing?'

Bucky shrugs with his right shoulder (it means something, everything means something, every little gesture), doesn't look Steve in the eye, crosses the room in three strides. He stands between Steve's spread thighs, and then he drops to his knees.

'Buck, wait —'

'Shut up.'

He starts unbuckling Steve's belt with single-minded focus, not looking up, the same way he strips guns and cleans knives. Fight or flight turns into fight or…something else entirely. The room suddenly feels much smaller, the air heavier. Steve hates that his heavy breathing has little to do with fear, though that's still there — but maybe now the threat and the danger will always be sewn into the fabric of their shared history. Maybe a sick, damaged part of Steve finds it to be part of the appeal.

Except it's wrong, wrong, wrong. Steve forces himself to grab Bucky's wrists to still them. He hates that he has to _force_ himself to do it; he should be better than that.

'Don't,' he says. He hates the sound of his voice, too, for how little resolve there's in it. 'You and me, we're not — we never —'

Bucky shakes his head. 'Yeah, I remember,' he says, mouth twisted in an unhappy smirk. 'He knew, back then. You wanted Bucky and he knew, always did. Coulda had anyone, though. Never picked you.'

It's the last thing Steve expects to hear, and he feels heat creep up his neck. 'And now, what, I'm convenient?'

The stupidity of the words hits him as soon as they crawl off his tongue, and the way Bucky scowls up at him says that he realises it, too. What Steve should be focussing on is that Bucky is in no place to be agreeing to this kind of thing, in no place to want it and mean it; because even if he knows Steve had wanted him, that doesn't mean he'd wanted Steve _back_. This, here, it's wrong.

'You don't have to,' says Steve weakly. The grip he has on Bucky's wrists is sure, at least. 'You got nothing to prove.'

'Don't have to,' Bucky echoes. He leans back. ' _Want_ to.'

And suddenly, like a punch in the gut, Steve knows what this is about: choice. Possibility. After decades, Bucky has a chance to be impulsive and not be — punished, maybe, or wiped clean; made to forget, like he'd been made and re-made to perform a myriad bad and worse deeds. He has a choice, now.

Steve lets go of his wrists. He expects Bucky to smile, at the very least, and doesn't let himself be disappointed when it doesn't come. Bucky just nods, his expression set. He finishes undoing Steve's trousers with steady hands and settles more comfortably on his knees, leans in closer, and that's when Steve catches a glimpse of black on his shoulders when he angles his back just so.

'Wait. Wait. What —'

Biting back a frustrated growl, Bucky looks up at him. 'Do you _ever_ fuckin' shut up?'

Steve isn't listening. His breathing is coming faster again and it has nothing to do with the proximity of Bucky's hands to his dick and undone jeans. All words die on his tongue when he gently tugs Bucky closer by the hair, and Bucky goes pliantly and without protest, and — there, on his shoulder blades. The ink must be fresh and the skin around the lines is an angry red. He must have gotten the tattoo recently. Days. A week, tops.

'Where did you do this?'

Before he answers, Bucky breathes in and out. He bites his lower lip and smooths his hands down Steve's thighs, one warm through the fabric of Steve's jeans and the other not so much. He turns his head slightly, until Steve is cupping the back of his neck. On automatic, Steve reaches out with his free hand to run the tips of his fingers down Bucky's right, flesh and blood, shoulder. The way Bucky shivers at the touch, the way he leans into Steve's other hand, the fact that he's still on his knees, all of it is enough that Steve can barely hear Bucky speak over the roar of blood in his ears.

'London.'

' _Why_?'

'I could,' he says, barely above a whisper. 'Wanted to. So I did.'

Because it's about choice, and control, and autonomy. It's about Bucky staking a claim over his own body, because it was denied him for decades and finally he has a say in what is done to him and what he does to others. It's about choice and control and autonomy and maybe, just maybe, it should be about trust. Steve shifts his grip on the back of Bucky's neck, nails dragging over his skin, and pulls Bucky closer.

He doesn't know what he's expecting, except he knows: he expects Bucky to panic, and he expects himself to not even be able to get hard, and he expects this to end in violence and blood. It doesn't happen. Bucky's hands are deft and steady, both of them, and when he runs his tongue over his lower lip — oh, Steve knows he won't have any goddamn trouble getting hard for this. It's a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea, and Steve's entire world shrinks until all that's left is the stale taste at the tip of his tongue, the white noise of television, the nails of Bucky's right hand digging into his thigh, Bucky's left hand wrapped around his dick and jesus, god, Bucky's mouth on him.

Steve leans back, supporting himself with one hand, and tangles the other in Bucky's hair. He closes his eyes and lets himself just — feel, and stop thinking altogether. He tips his head back and doesn't wonder if Bucky can see him baring his throat like this, like he's laying down an offering to the ghost of a wolf in the Winter Soldier's skin.

He's loud, because he has to be to drown out the silence; the room fills with the sound of his breathing and the noises he makes are undignified, broken and pleading. He's loud, otherwise the quiet will choke him up. Bucky stays completely silent and it's terrifying how good he is at this. No one's gone down on Steve since 1943, in a rain-slicked back alley in Milwaukee with the USO chorus still ringing in his ears, and it's frightening to think that between then and now it's Bucky who had practice.

Though maybe, maybe, he just never lost his touch.

It takes so little time for Steve to start falling apart at the seams that he'd be ashamed, but all he can do is bite his tongue on a wordless prayer as he comes down Bucky's throat without any real warning. His toes curl into the dirty carpet, his hand fists in the bedsheets and he forces himself to not pull at Bucky's hair.

'Oh, fuck,' he breathes. 'Fuck. _Fuck_.'

Bucky lets him go without a word. When Steve manages to open his eyes, it's to the sight of Bucky wiping his mouth with the back of his right hand. He clears his throat and he's still not smiling, but he doesn't look unhappy either. Dizzily, Steve wonders if he doesn't like the touch of metal on his own skin; if he avoids it.

In the quiet room Steve's breathing feels too noisy, and surely Bucky can hear his heart hammering in his chest like a spooked animal. He watches Bucky watch him and has no fucking clue what to even _say_.

He doesn't have to say anything, then, it turns out; while he's still catching his breath, Bucky slides up from his knees in one fluid movement and gets in Steve's space. It shouldn't be possible for him to loom, shirtless and still scowling, and Steve shouldn't be distracted by the way muscle and joints shift under his skin, all delicate machinery which parts amount to a deadly whole. He lets Bucky push him down until he's lying flat on his back and there, with Bucky's thighs bracketing his hips, his face half-shadowed and eyes bright, it's difficult to breathe again.

Bucky's left hand hovers inches above Steve's throat. Steve can feel himself break out in cold sweat at the memory of the Winter Soldier's fingers clenched around his neck.

'Tell me what you want,' he says.

Bucky's voice is hoarse when he leans in — fluid and light and graceful like a panther, his eyes never leaving Steve's — and whispers, 'Touch me.'

So Steve does, moving in a daze, he reaches between them to undo Bucky's trousers one-handed. He couldn't look away from Bucky's blown pupils and the heat spilling over his cheeks if he tried. He sucks in a sharp breath when Bucky's hips jerk, inching into the touch as if involuntarily. His head drops to Steve's shoulder.

'Like this?' Steve asks, even though it's pretty goddamn needless. He listens to every choked-back order and plea: faster, slower, harder, _there_. The fingers of Bucky's right hand are twisted tight in the sheets next to Steve's head and Steve doesn't think about his left, the proximity to his own trachea, or the ease it would take to —

He expects it from the buildup, from the way Bucky rocks into his hand as if starved for decades and decades and decades (which he must be, which he _is_ ), from his quickening breath, and it still feels like somebody pulling the ground from under Steve when Bucky stills above him and lets out a small, pained, almost scared moan.

Steve wants to reach out. He wants to wrap his arms around Bucky's shoulders and let him come down, but he doesn't move and doesn't protest when Bucky rolls off of him to lie down on his side.

He asks, instead, 'That what you wanted?'

'Could ask the same thing,' Bucky mutters. When Steve turns to him, he's pressing his face into the bedsheets and his eyes are shut. Too much stimuli, maybe. He doesn't look overwhelmed, exactly, but he does look vulnerable and Steve wonders if it makes him special to get to see the Winter Soldier in a moment of near-fragility and survive to tell the tale.

'If you remember,' he says, 'then you know what I want.' He almost echoes Bucky's words from earlier. _Always did_ , and god help him, it's true.

Bucky opens his eyes. They're bright and clear and lucid, and it will probably take months still before Steve can read any emotion in them the way he'd been able to once, but he's willing to wait.

He watches Bucky sit up, roll his shoulders. He watches Bucky willingly give his naked back to Steve like a bared throat, and he watches the lines of black ink shift across Bucky's shoulder blades and there is nothing stopping Steve from tracing the edges with the tips of his fingers as he commits the design to memory. There's nothing stopping him from reaching out; he wants to and he can, so he does.

He watches Bucky tense up at the first touch, instantaneous and reflexive, and after a moment he watches that same tension slowly seep out of Bucky's shoulders.

Come what may, Steve is willing to wait.


End file.
